GOP watch: Fear and loathing at RNC

The Republican National Committee plans to raise money this election cycle through an aggressive campaign capitalizing on "fear" of President Barack Obama and a promise to "save the country from trending toward socialism," Politico's Ben Smith reports. "In neat PowerPoint pages, [the presentation] lifts the curtain on the often-cynical terms of political marketing, displaying an air of disdain for the party's donors that is usually confined to the barroom conversations of political operatives.

"Karl Rove, the chief political adviser to President George W. Bush and architect of his two successful campaigns for the White House, says in a new memoir that Mr. Bush probably would not have invaded Iraq had he known there were no unconventional weapons there," the New York Times says. "Mr. Rove adamantly rejects accusations that the administration deliberately lied about the presence of such weapons in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. But he acknowledges that the failure to find them badly damaged Mr. Bush's presidency, and he blames himself for not countering the narrative that 'Bush lied,' calling it 'one of the biggest mistakes of the Bush years.'"